LDS NEST BLOG

Back in July we had Youth Conference. In ﻿that post﻿ I mentioned that we did service videos but couldn't share them because they weren't edited yet. Well, now they are! Our Stake had a premiere night to show them to the youth. We did a red "carpet", awards, paparazzi, and dressed up. Here are photos from that night.

I was in charge of the overall project so I thought I'd share how we went about doing it incase you want to try. We did four for our stake but I would recommend doing one on a ward level.

1) Have a message that you want to share2) Have some guidelines as adult leaders.These were some of ours • to use the youth as much as possible, especially in the video • have a point/message to it • have the youth part of something bigger than they are • done so it won't be lame :) (don't have youth speak or act much, keep it simple)3) Have some conceptual idea how you want it to video tape it. Copy other's ideas with variation. For example • Make Your Mark was based on the video ﻿Flourish﻿ by ﻿Dana Tanamachi-Williams﻿ • True Beauty & Real Men were based on this video An Experiment in Words (or ﻿36 Smiles﻿) from the Pleasant Grove Utah Mount Mahogany Stake 4th Ward • Get approval of the concept summaries4) Make a committee • Ours included Stake Youth (SYC youth), Stake YWYM Presidency members, and Specialists • Have youth go over video concepts and make changes, suggestions, and/or other ideas • Re-write concept summaries and get approval5) Get Specialists. These had to be skill specific. Meaning they had to be artistic, conceptual thinkers, or have video/editing skills. It would have been nice to have all professionals but that's usually not the case in the church for projects like this. This is a large project that requires Approve and call specialists. • Make Your Mark - construction crew (chalkboard), design, videographer, video editor • True Beauty - Materials, videographer, video editor • Real Men - Props, videographer, video editor • Music Moves Me - transportation, music, talent, videographer, video editor6) Meet together as a whole.There's a lot of moving parts/people here so the sooner you can meet all together the better. The truth is, this didn't happen for some groups until the morning of. 7) Video tape. We used a 3 hour block of Youth Conference to video tape. Every group (approx 220 total youth) worked at the same time. Before taping, we had a speaker for each group (except Music) talk about the topic for 15 minutes to set the tone and share the idea. Video tapping was a one shot deal so we had 2-3 videographers for each video. 8) Edit video. This is basically a one person job. This is where your conceptual idea has to have been communicated clearly since it's this person who will ultimately pick and choose what goes into the video. Some or parts of our videos didn't turn out the way the committee had intended. Communication is key but even then sometimes things just work out differently than planned. Stake YWYM leaders did an initial viewing with recommended changes.9) Final Approval. Our Stake Presidency had final approval and recommendations before the youth viewed them. 10) Be realist, gracious, and thankful. Remember we all do this for free. Usually we don't actually know what we're doing. Being realist (for the planned and unplanned), gracious (accepting what people can/can't do), and thankful (that it came together at all) to all who help.

This video project was out of a lot of youth and leader's comfort zones. It's hard to say how things you've never done will turn out. The uncertainty adds anxiety. Hopefully these steps will help keep the stress level low. This is a project that I would do again.

I think this is a new face for service. It's not the traditional shovels and rags but a lot of work nonetheless. Which translated into 15,000 Facebook views for about the first week. Not bad for a bunch of mostly amateurs.

Reading an article this month in BYU Magazine made me think of this little kit I did for some of my fam. It's the Compliment Kit and it's been downloaded over 4000 times between the 2 files. It seems we all want to write random compliments. They call them "praise notes" in this article. Call them whatever you like just write them. That's the important thing. Read this if you need more convincing.

Here are a couple of photos from our Stake's Youth Conference the last couple of days. This first one is of Wade (son and brother) and his t-shirt design. He did it himself and you can read more about it here. Love this kid.

Wade and his Youth Conference T-shirt Design

Second is a photo from one of our service projects. I don't know about your stake but our youth are super fast at service projects and we often have a hard time finding something that will fit our 3 hour time frame that involves our 200 youth. (If you have any good ideas, share them with us below.) This year our stake decided to broaden our service project vision. We did the filming for 4 Service Message Videos at youth conference. One of the videos involves this 24' x 8' chalkboard near our stake center and Kansas City Temple.

I think this video (#ldsmakeyourmark) had about 75 youth with scriptures that inspired them and their testimonies. The other videos involve music (#ldsmakeyourmark), beauty (#ldstruebeauty) and manhood (#ldsrealmen). I'm not going to say much more about it. Except I'm very excited about them (though there was a lot of uncertainty in the project until we did it) and to share them with you. You'll have to watch for the videos in September. What do you think of our Service Message Videos idea?

PS You might even see one of Alisha's boys - my grandson - in one of them.

There are always activities in the church and we generally get information out with flyers. In the past few months we've had a couple of stake youth activities that we needed flyers for. (BTW - These were GREAT activities!) Usually we have youth do the flyers but with the timing we had I ended up doing them. We figured you might be able to use them in some way for your activities.

Soooooo.... you can download blank ones to use. If someone asks you to do a flyer you can just add your own wording to change it up. Wham. Bam. Done.

Contention is a part of what happens in families but something we all try to stop in our homes. I was thinking about it and what I could do to help our family lessen it when I came across Gordon B. Hinckley's quote -

"There's a sad tendency in our world today for persons to cut one another down.... Try the opposite of that. Try handing out compliments."

Compliments. How easy. I thought this would be a super first step for me to take. And then I had this idea (the Boyfriend calls me "the idea woman"). I could make little Compliment kits. I love kits. (You can see a collection of kits on my Pinterest board.)

CLICK ABOVE FOR DOWNLOAD

I was heading down for a trip that some of our family had planned when we had Leila's funeral. We also decided to do devotionals when we got together. I wanted to do the compliment kits for them as part of mine. Here's what's inside and how we use it.

CLICK ABOVE FOR DOWNLOAD

CLICK ABOVE FOR DOWNLOAD

I really like how they turned out. I Mod Podge® fabric to the outside of an Altoid® tin. Inside, I added some fun things. Here's the nestibles for you. Print. Cut. Put together.

CLICK ABOVE FOR DOWNLOAD

CLICK ABOVE FOR DOWNLOAD

Here's a FHE lesson to help talk about with your family.

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CLICK ABOVE FOR DOWNLOAD

CLICK ABOVE IMAGE FOR DOWNLOAD PAGE

You'll have to tell us what you think and any of your experiences in using it.

Some of you have been asking about what and how to use the handouts we do here at LDS NEST. There really is a method to our methods.

We women in the church like our handouts. For as long as I can remember I've been getting handouts. I've even saved several from when I was in YW. (Let's not ask how long that's been.) One problem I had was that the handouts weren't accessible when I wanted them. And frankly, some of the other handouts I threw away and felt it was such a waste of resources.

I wanted a solution.

To help save on resources I started designing my handouts as 1/4 sheets (4 to a printed page). That way if someone didn't like them and threw them away it wasn't so bad. Also, when in leadership positions I suggested that all of us design handouts in this way so they could all be consistently sized to save.

Second, I put them on a ring. And for a lack of creativity I called it my Ring Thing. It stuck. I've been doing this size for years and it's been very helpful.

Some people hate handouts but personally I like them, probably because I'm visually oriented. Handouts remind us of thoughts and feelings we've had while being taught or a specific doctrine or principle that is important to us. They end up at bedsides, on fridges or taped to mirrors. It's part of our learning and changing.

(As a bonus, I've found that it helps the YW (or kids for seminary) re-teach a principle.)

My Ring Thing is like a mini book. A personally collected tutorial. You really can collect anything you like.

Here's our some of our covers.

Here at LDS NEST we'll continue to do most of our handouts at this size. Maybe you'll start designing and doing the same.

Hello Nestie friends! Have you signed up for our blog updates? If you haven't, do it! (look in the sidebar) so you don't miss out on free stuff like this every week. These journal cards and handouts are for "How do I guard my virtue?" if you haven't covered that section yet. As always, click and save the images to print out on your own, or click here to download.

{journal cards 4x6}

{handouts 3x4/4x3}

Let us know if you download these! Feel free to pin and share with your friends!

I got to help my Auntie out last week with some cards for her ward's Relief Society night. If you think you can use them too click the images and save as or you can download them here! All images are 6x4. Enjoy!

Baby Joseph's Dad, Sky, called me today to share something Leila wrote. He found it on her iPad and it touched him. It was her mother wishes she wanted for Joseph. I don't know if she was finished with her list but it was enough.

The reality is that Joseph will never know Leila in this life and will have another mother to raise him. He'll be caught up in life and won't have a need to know her. But I suspect many years from now, likely when he's an adult, he'll wonder. He might be drawn to a few of the mementos that connect directly to her. They might give a glimpse of who she was and how she thought. Maybe he'll see a little of himself in her.

So today I spent some of my time putting her words into design for him.

Anyone who is a mother knows that the words “joy” and “motherhood” are rarely used in the same sentence. M. Russell Ballard said, "The joy of motherhood comes in moments..." As someone who didn't plan on being a mother (ever), the word “motherhood” gives me a mild anxiety attack. As do the phrases, “I’m pregnant!” and “when I was in labor…”

My sweet baby, Caeden, is now 16 months old (just under a year and a half for people like me who hate to count). And guess what…he is such a joy! Not all of the time of course, and really I can’t complain too much on the days he is less than joyous. I only have one little monster to escape from.

Then I realized something. Motherhood isn't something that I should want to escape from. I can make joy happen! While some of these may be no-brainers for you veteran moms, they were news to me!

Take an obscene amount of pictures. I take about 50 pictures every time I pull my camera out. I don’t think I’m exaggerating either. Take pictures of your baby eating, exploring, playing with his toys, and destroying his room. Even if my kid is crying I take pictures. He settles down after a few takes, and soon I have a laughing, smiling baby boy! I even created a gallery here because I take SO MANY.

Put that baby in the tub! And not just to clean him. If your baby loves to splash, let him splash! Give your baby a cup, and if he drinks that bath water (gross) let him! Put some finger paint up on the walls. Bath time is the bomb. It is never too early, or too late for tub time.

Have a bed party. Simply hang out on mom and dad’s bed. Bring your babe’s favorite toy. My baby’s favorite toy currently consists of “nothing”, but try and launch himself over the edge of the bed. I haven’t dropped him on his head…yet.

Let your kid “help” you. Caeden is to the point where he follows me everywhere, shuts anything I open, and puts everything in the trash can. This includes the semi-neatly folded, clean clothes from his dresser and the books from his bookshelf. So I say to myself, “Self! Teaching opportunity!” Then I attempt to teach him which thing goes where. He still puts everything in the trash can.

Read to your little one. They don’t have to sit on your lap, and they don’t even have to look at the pictures. Chances are they won’t do either, but they really just like to hear someone talking. It’s like magic.

Have a pajama day and eat a cookie for breakfast. For real.

Some things are just meant to be let go. Let go of the little, nit-picky things that bother you. It's okay if your kid puts away the books upside down and sideways. It's okay if his toys end up in the laundry basket and you don't find out until you wash it. It's OKAY.

Stay tuned because next week I'll tell you what I've learned about motherhood!